Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Again, to show my preparation for this, I have the exchange of notes in front of me. The noble Lord is right about the 1966 exchange of notes, but to reflect the change in the treaty that is proposed, the exchange of notes will need to be amended and adapted. He is right to say that officials, both here and in the US, have agreed on the changes to the exchange of notes; however, not all the American system has agreed with those changes. Whatever our view, it is quite an important part of the American system that has not agreed with the changes.

We will continue the discussions we are having to try to ensure that we take forward something that we believe is in the interests not only of the United Kingdom but of the United States and the security alliances on which we depend. That is the important thing. I do not want to sound pompous—although this does sound pompous—but as a UK Government Minister what I am really interested in is how I work with others across government in the interests of the country and the alliances that we represent. I appreciate that there are many others doing this or that, but my interest is in the defence of the country and the protection of Diego Garcia.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Redwood (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, we will hear from the Labour Benches, then the Conservative Benches and then the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey.

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, thank you very much for letting me get in. My noble friend the Minister is very robust but, from listening to this debate, I find it a bit difficult to imagine the kind of cross-party discussions and sensible debate that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, asked for. I begin with what the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said: he started by accusing the Government of doing a U-turn. I think there have been two U-turns on this: the first was from the President of the United States, who is volatile as always—we have heard just how far the negotiations had already gone between the State Department and the FCDO—and the second was from the Conservative Party. It was absolutely clear that the previous Conservative Government, as my noble friend the Minister said, spent 11 rounds of debate on this, and they produced a proposal for a treaty that is full of all the things that were in the treaty that this Government came up with. I think that there is a bit of a U-turn on the noble Lord’s side. Does my noble friend agree, given what has happened, that it is somewhat hypocritical to hear the Conservative Front Benches making the sort of criticisms they have made when they have been through all this themselves?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. It is in the interests of the country to try to take this forward. It is in all our interests to try to do that, because it is in the interests not only of our country but of the security alliances on which we depend. The point made by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis—which I gently point out again to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan—is that the idea that this started under this Government is simply not the case. There were rounds after rounds of negotiations beforehand, where the previous Government tried to deal with what they regarded as a difficulty that potentially put Diego Garcia under threat. That is what I would like the noble Lord opposite sometimes to recognise, because it is important that it did not start under us.